October 31, 2008

When last I wrote about Bill Sali (R-ID 01), he was making bunny ears at his opponent's staff while they were being interviewed. The time before that, he was claiming that "Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil." In devastating news for humorists everywhere, it looks like he might finally be getting into electoral trouble:

"CQ Politics, which takes past voting behavior and demographics into account in handicapping elections, has held the Idaho 1 race at a very tenuous Leans Republican rating, meaning Sali had an edge but an upset by Minnick was a plausible scenario. But the growing financial disparity between the parties in this contest — and the fact that Minnick had a 51 percent to 45 percent lead in an Oct. 18-19 poll by SurveyUSA, the only published independent poll to date in the race — has prompted a rating change to No Clear Favorite."

But just to make up for this news, the article I just cited notes one Sali gem that I wasn't aware of:

"He also introduced a bill proposing to weaken Earth’s gravity that was intended to lampoon Democratic-led efforts to raise the minimum wage, calling the two proposals equally absurd."

Much to my chagrin, I find that Sali did not actually introduce the bill, though he did draft it (pdf). Still, it's the thought that counts.

It's not every day that Paul Krugman and Martin Feldstein (head of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors and an economic advisor to the McCain campaign) find themselves in complete agreement, but they are in agreement now. Feldstein:

"With the Fed's benchmark interest rate down to 1 percent, there is no scope for an easier monetary policy to stop the downward spiral in aggregate demand. (...)

The only way to prevent a deepening recession will be a temporary program of increased government spending. Previous attempts to use government spending to stimulate an economic recovery, particularly spending on infrastructure, have not been successful because of long legislative lags that delayed the spending until a recovery was well underway. But while past recessions lasted an average of only about 12 months, this downturn is likely to last much longer, providing the scope for successful countercyclical spending."

"One of the high points of the semester, if you're a teacher of introductory macroeconomics, comes when you explain how individual virtue can be public vice, how attempts by consumers to do the right thing by saving more can leave everyone worse off. The point is that if consumers cut their spending, and nothing else takes the place of that spending, the economy will slide into a recession, reducing everyone’s income.

In fact, consumers' income may actually fall more than their spending, so that their attempt to save more backfires -- a possibility known as the paradox of thrift.

At this point, however, the instructor hastens to explain that virtue isn't really vice: in practice, if consumers were to cut back, the Fed would respond by slashing interest rates, which would help the economy avoid recession and lead to a rise in investment. So virtue is virtue after all, unless for some reason the Fed can't offset the fall in consumer spending.

I’ll bet you can guess what’s coming next.

For the fact is that we are in a liquidity trap right now: Fed policy has lost most of its traction. It’s true that Ben Bernanke hasn’t yet reduced interest rates all the way to zero, as the Japanese did in the 1990s. But it's hard to believe that cutting the federal funds rate from 1 percent to nothing would have much positive effect on the economy. In particular, the financial crisis has made Fed policy largely irrelevant for much of the private sector: The Fed has been steadily cutting away, yet mortgage rates and the interest rates many businesses pay are higher than they were early this year.

The capitulation of the American consumer, then, is coming at a particularly bad time. But it’s no use whining. What we need is a policy response. (...)

No, what the economy needs now is something to take the place of retrenching consumers. That means a major fiscal stimulus. And this time the stimulus should take the form of actual government spending rather than rebate checks that consumers probably wouldn’t spend."

ABC News is reporting today that General Petraeus has been pushing for a meeting with Syria's leadership but the Bush administration has refused. Although ABC News labels this an exclusive scoop, in truth, the story has been circulating for some time. Josh Landis, for example, was on the beat months ago:

The following “Exclusive” ABC story is not so exclusive. Syria Comment has been writing since August 2008 that Petraeus tried to go to Damascus in the fall of 2007, but was refused permission by the Vice President. It wasn’t the president.

As Daniel Levy mentioned recently, Petraeus and Pentagon leadership have been pleased with recent overtures from the Syrians, and cautiously optimistic about the potential to build on that cooperation:

The Pentagon sees Syrian efforts to seal the border with Iraq as having been a mixed bag, and they would certainly want further improvements. General Petraeus has acknowledged these improvements and carries with him a PowerPoint presentation that includes a box entitled "Improved Relations and Coordination with Syria".

But then, despite this progress and the continuation of peace talks between Israel and Syria, the Bush administration went ahead with a cross border raid and airstrikes aimed at targets in Syrian territory. Instead of supporting and expanding the diplomatic process, the Bush administration opted for a show of force. According to initial reports, which, admittedly, should be taken with a grain of salt, this hasn't worked out too well:

The Syrian government has broken relations with Baghdad. It has completely opened its border. This article in Al-Arabiya (Al-Arabiya is generally fairly reliable) says that the Syrians have reduced their forces on the border. That's NOT what I'm hearing from BOTH sides of the border. What I'm hearing from very trustworthy sources whom I've known for years is that the Syrians have completely withdrawn their forces from the border.

No troops.

No border guards.

No police.

Do I have to spell it out? Maybe I do. The Syrians have worked massively to close their border. They have worked massively to prevent armed groups getting across the border. All of that has now come to an end.

But then, the belief in the efficacy of force, coupled with an uncompromising refusal to accommodate the vital interests of various adversaries, is a particular maladay of the Bush administration. This passage from Ron Suskind's One Percent Doctrine (pp. 104-105) is prophetic as to the many foreign policy stumbles and tragedies to ensue:

...it became clear at the start of 2001 that [the Bush] administration was to alter the long-standing U.S. role of honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to something less than that. The President, in fact, had said in the first NSC principals meeting of his administration that Clinton had overreached at the end of his second term, bending too much toward Yasser Arafat -- who then broke off productive Camp David negotiations at the final moment -- and that "We're going to tilt back ward Israel." Powell, a chair away in the Situation Room that day, said such a move would reverse thirty years of U.S. policy, and that it could unleash the new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and the Israeli army in ways that could be dire for the Palestinians. Bush's response: "Sometimes a show of force by one side can really clarify things." [emphasis mine]

Sometimes it does, but as Sharon learned, as we learned in Iraq, and the Israelis relearned in Lebanon in 2006, the clarification that follows a show of force isn't always a positive. War, the use of force, armed conflict - each has myriad unintended, and often painful, consequences for all parties involved. Yes, that is stating the obvious, but then, our foreign policy during the Bush years has been modeled on a doctrine that disdains reality and empiricism so common sense takes on the air of wisdom.

If it is true that Syria has flung open its borders, then what exactly is the value of clarifying the situation with such bellicosity when the net result is a negative?

To echo publius' point, the Republican Party's foreign policy consensus - drawing heavily from neoconservative doctrine - has been repeatedly discredited and battered by reality. Yet the Bush administration, when Cheney's wing gets too much say, stumbles on. And the McCain campaign, instead of repudiating the neocon program, has doubled down by recruiting the most committed and doctrinaire advocates to fill out his roster of advisors.

Petraeus, much more in line with the progressive/Obama school of thought, recognizes the wisdom of engaging adversaries diplomatically, differentiating between opponents so as to deal with each entity and issue discretely (which disrupts alliances of convenience among enemies rather than encourage them) and, lastly, when the opportunity presents itself, even working with erstwhile battlefiled opponents. Petraeus implemented this strategy in Iraq by encouraging the Awakenings movement that coopted former Sunni insurgents, is beginning to pursue it in Afghanistan by reaching out to certain Taliban elements and is trying to do the same with Syria - where he sees a potential opening and wedge to be driven between Syria and Iran.

Oddly, considering the extent to which he is lionized by so many McCain/Plain supporters, Petraeus would likely have to wait for an Obama administration to see any further exploration of normalizing relations with Syria. McCain/Palin, like the Cheney wing of the Bush administration, label this type of pragmatism reckless, naive appeasement. They don't negotiate with evil, dontcha know.

I want to second Eric's condemnation of John McCain's attack's on Rashid Khalidi. Eric quoted Juan Cole, which led some commenters to question Cole's objectivity. I will therefore cite two other people. First, Barnett Rubin:

"I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot's more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don't know what to say.

I don't want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi."

"In the current issue of National Review, Andrew McCarthy continues his campaign to link the Democratic nominee to various and sundry Hyde Park radicals. This time it is “PLO advisor turned University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi,” who now heads the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia University. Khalidi, we learn, makes a habit of justifying and supporting the work of terrorists and is “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat.” And then we learn that this same Khalidi knows Obama and that his children even babysat for Obama’s kids!

This doesn’t sound much like the Rashid Khalidi I know. I’ve followed his career for many years, read his articles and books, listened to his presentations, and engaged him in discussions of politics, the arts, and history. In fact, as McCarthy’s piece ran, I was midway through an advance copy of Khalidi’s new book Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. (I’ll be reviewing it next month–stay tuned.) Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches. However, whereas Bush believes these values can be introduced in the wake of bombs and at the barrel of a gun, Khalidi disagrees. He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles. Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants.

McCarthy states that Khalidi “founded” the Arab American Action Network (AAAN). In fact, he neither founded it nor has anything to do with it. But AAAN is not, as McCarthy suggests, a political organization. It is a social-services organization, largely funded by the state of Illinois and private foundations, that provides support for English-language training, citizenship classes, after-school and summer programs for schoolchildren, women’s shelters, and child care among Chicago’s sizable Arab community (and for others on the city’s impoverished South Side). Does McCarthy consider this sort of civic activism objectionable? Since it was advocated aggressively by President Bush–this is “compassionate conservativism” in action–such an objection would be interesting. Nor was Khalidi ever a spokesman for the PLO, though that was reported in an erroneous column by the New York Times’s Tom Friedman in 1982. That left me curious about the final and most dramatic accusation laid at Khalidi’s doorstep: that the Khalidis babysat for the Obamas. Was it true? I put the question to Khalidi. “No, it is not true,” came the crisp reply. Somehow that was exactly the answer I expected. (...)

I have a suggestion for Andy McCarthy and his Hyde Park project. If he really digs down deep enough, he will come up with a Hyde Park figure who stood in constant close contact with Barack Obama and who, unlike Ayers and Khalidi, really did influence Obama’s thinking about law, government, and policy. He is to my way of thinking a genuine radical. His name is Richard Posner, and he appears to be the most frequently and positively cited judge and legal academic in… National Review."

***

I think this is completely dishonorable. Comparing Rashid Khalidi to a neo-Nazi is just beyond vile. But even without that, it just plays on anti-Arab sentiment. Does anyone think that McCain's audiences know much about Rashid Khalidi, other than his suspiciously Arab name? For that matter, does anyone think that McCain knows much about him? The fact that he repeats the charge that Khalidi was a spokesman for the PLO, a claim that Khalidi denies, and that there is independent reason to think is false -- suggests either that he doesn't know, or that he doesn't care what the truth is. [UPDATE: See here for an argument that Khalidi was, in fact, a spokesman for the PLO. I think that the evidence so far is inconclusive. END UPDATE] [FURTHER UPDATE: Ron Kampeas, who wrote the post I linked to right before the updates, now says that "the evidence of Rashid Khalidi's PLO past is now irrefutable." Thanks to Martin Kramer for bringing this to my attention. END FURTHER UPDATE>]

Khalidi is just a red flag to wave in front of McCain's audiences. Mentioning his name produces the effect it does because that name is Arab. McCain surely knows this.

Colin Powell was big enough to denounce this kind of appeal to bigotry. Years ago, I would have imagined that McCain would do likewise, or at least that he would not engage in it himself. I wish I had been right. And I imagine that in a few weeks, when he contemplates the shredded remains of his honor, he will too.

October 30, 2008

Via John Cole, I've honestly never seen someone (at that level) act like such a complete d*** on TV before. He's attained some Platonic ideal of d***ness. I'm no PR coach, but I suspect the goal is to make something less than 100% of your audience detest you.

One of my hobbyhorses of late is to illustrate – at the institutional party level (i.e., the “sphere”) – that progressive policies are simply superior to conservative ones at this point in history. It’s not merely that I subjectively prefer the former, or that the dueling policy approaches present equally plausible options. It’s that recent events have vindicated progressive assumptions of the world, and illustrated why modern conservative policies are often based on factually inaccurate – or dreamworld – assumptions about how the world actually works. See, e.g., global warming, stimulus effectiveness, financial bailout, etc.

Today, let’s add high-risk pools to that list, because they illustrate this larger point perfectly. Yesterday’s WP examined Minnesota’s high-risk pool and explained why programs like these are central to McCain’s health care “policy.”

Here’s the nickel version. McCain’s proposal seeks to push more people into individual plans (rather than employer plans). The problem, however, is that lots of people would be disqualified on the individual market on the basis of, say, pre-existing conditions. In response, some states have established programs where the government subsidizes insurance companies to take on these higher-risk, high-cost individuals. McCain has made these pools a lynchpin of his larger plan – indeed, he has to, given that he’s otherwise doing literally nothing for people with pre-existing conditions. (Jonathan Cohn has a more extensive background on these programs here).

Sounds not terrible, right? Well, wrong. These high-risk pools are essentially big jokes. More precisely, the idea that high-risk pools adequately deal with the needs of the uninsurable is a joke. And it’s a joke for two reasons – (1) they have proven wretchedly deficient in practice; and (2) they are also a conceptually flawed idea. I’ll examine both after the jump. Take it to the chorus.

Juan Cole comments on the ugly attacks unleashed by McCain/Palin on Rashid Khalidi in an attempt to, ultimately, diminish Obama's standing because he knows a Palestinian-American who participated (constructively!) in the Mideast Peace Process. It's vile, it's racist and, sadly, it's par for the course for the McCain campaign and far too many of its supporters.

While this guilt-by-association-to-the-innocent-but-Muslim is the latest degradation, the McCain campaign has truly distinguished itself from its predecessors for its pervasive dishonesty, demagoguery and willingness to use race and religion repeatedly in the most insidious and divisive ways. It's worse than Willie Horton:

Khalidi is an American scholar of Palestinian heritage, born in New York and educated at Yale and Oxford, who now teaches at Columbia University. He directed the Middle East Center at the University of Chicago for some time, and he and his family came to know the Obamas at that time. Knowing someone and agreeing with him on everything are not the same thing. Scott Horton has a fine, informed and intelligent discussion of the issue.

McCain's and Palin's attacks on Khalidi are frankly racist. He is a distinguished scholar, and the only objectionable thing about him from a rightwing point of view is that he is a Palestinian. There are about 9 million Palestinians in the world (a million or so are Israeli citizens; 3.7 million are stateless and without rights under Israeli control in the West Bank and Gaza; and 4 million are refugees or exiled in the diaspora; there are about 200,000 Palestinian-Americans, and several million Arab-Americans, many living in swing vote states). Khalidi was not, as the schlock rightwing press charges, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization. He was an adviser at the Madrid peace talks, but would that not have been, like, a good thing?

Much of the assault on Khalidi comes from the American loony Zionist Right, which quietly supports illegal Zionist colonies in the West Bank and the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Palestinians. They have been tireless advocates of miring the US in wars in Iraq and Iran to ensure that their dreams of ethnic cleansing are unopposed. They are a tiny, cranky but well-funded group that has actively harassed anyone who disagrees with them (at one point, cued by Daniel Pipes, they cyberstalked Khalidi and clogged his email mailbox with spam for weeks at a time). All opinion polling shows that most American Jews are politically liberal, overwhelmingly vote Democrat, and support trading land for peace to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi is their political ally in any serious peace process, which many have recognized.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has repudiated the "Greater Israel" fantasy that drives the Middle East Forum, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Commentary, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and other well-funded sites of far-right thinking on Israel-Palestine that have become, with the rise of the Neoconservatives, highly influential with the US Republican Party. Olmert's current position is much closer to Khalidi's than it is to the American ideologues. That McCain should take his cues from people to the right of the Neoconservatives shows fatal lack of judgment and signals that if he is elected, he will likely pursue policies that are very bad for Israel, forestalling a genuine peace process (which would involve close relations with Palestinians!) McCain even compared the gathering for Khalidi that Obama attended to a "neo-Nazi" meeting! I mean, really. This is the lowest McCain has sunk yet. McCain is bringing up Khalidi in order to scare Jewish voters about Obama's associations, and it is an execrable piece of McCarthyism and in fact much worse than McCarthyism since it is not about ideology but rather has racial overtones. Not allowed to pal around with Arab-Americans, I guess. What other ethnic groups should we not pal around with, from McCain's point of view? Is there a list? Are some worse than others?

The rightwing American way of speaking about these issues is bizarre from a Middle Eastern point of view. Lots of real living Israelis have close ties to actually existing Palestinians. There are 12 Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset, and they have helped keep the Kadima government in power. Here is PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas with current Israeli Prime Minister Tzipi Livni [picture]; Livni has repeatedly negotiated with the PLO as foreign minister of Israel. McCain's entire line of attack assumes that Palestinian equals "bad" and ignores Israel's and the Bush administration's support for the PLO against Hamas.

You know what would be nice? If a Republican could manage to point out that being Muslim and/or Palestinian is not inherently a bad thing. Labeling someone a Muslim or Palestinian should not, ipso facto, be a slur. And then take umbrage at this line of attack.

That is, a Republican who hasn't been driven from the GOP by the Party's shameless race-bating.

Remind me to stop doubting the Obama campaign. I can't seem to stop it -- the doubt comes [start melody] regularrrr like seeeeeasons. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and each day publius doth worry about something stupid. Today's worry was that the ad was overkill, that it was unnecessary, etc. It literally bothered me all day long.

But then I watched it -- and I honestly thought it was great, and even sincerely moving at times (I'm basically a sucker for stories about his mother). Like everything else they do, it was pitch perfect. It wasn't focusing on Obama (as I feared it would), but upon the struggles of working families and how an Obama administration would address them. I didn't hear the word McCain once.

So I'm done doubting. I'm done saying Axelrod needs to do this or that. My measly pundit powers pale in comparison. I'm like a rope on the Goodyear Blimp.

Interesting tidbit from today's Communications Daily (via Lexis) on NBC's Olympics ratings -- and one that has implications for the current "white spaces" debate. In short, the Internets was good for TV:

Providing more than 56 million video streams via Internet during the Beijing Olympics boosted rather than diminished viewing of the games on traditional TV, said Perkins Miller, NBC senior vice president of digital media. "The biggest lesson we learned is that the notion of competition between digital and broadcast is a myth," he said in an interview.
. . .

"There was no evidence of cannibalization of broadcast ... I hope that what this shows is the great demand for content to be delivered on multiple devices[.]"

There's a huge debate raging right now at the FCC about whether to open the so-called "white spaces" (unused portions of spectrum licensed to broadcasters) for new uses and technologies. In most areas (particularly rural areas), large amounts of "beachfront" spectrum reserved for broadcasters sits idle and is being completely wasted. If it were opened for public use (a la Wi-Fi), the idea is that new devices and technologies would pop up, vastly improving and expanding mobile broadband use. (To put it in perspective, the amount of "white space" spectrum potentially available is several times larger than the chunk of 700 MHz spectrum recently auctioned).

I'll be returning to this issue in the weeks ahead. But long story short, broadcasters have been resisting these efforts tooth and nail -- often in shamelessly dishonest ways. But hopefully the Olympics success is a lesson. More people using better mobile devices on better spectrum can expand -- rather than cannibalize -- the TV audience. And if, god forbid, broadcasters started using their spectrum in innovative ways such as mobile TV offerings, they might actually, you know, survive.

It's all very frustrating. It's not merely that an anachronistic business model propped up by powerful DC lobbies is blocking one of the most promising technological opportunities in decades. It's that they're doing so while shooting themselves in the foot at the same time.